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They dig history, a spadeful at a time
Local archeological sites yield rich deposits of region’s heritage
Friday, Dec. 7, 2007
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Gary Smith
James Gibb, left, of Gibb Archaeological Consulting and Maxine Grabill of the Archaeological Society of Maryland sift for Colonial artifacts during a recent dig at a site near the Port Tobacco Courthouse.
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Since the early part of the 20th century archeologists have been excavating sites throughout Southern Maryland that hide a wealth of artifacts.
They are revealing the area’s significance in history, including Historic St. Mary’s City — the original capital of Maryland — where the foundations of buildings from the 1600s were unearthed from fertile farmland.
In Calvert County, a 17th-century plantation reconstructed on the campus of Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum in St. Leonard, reveals how early settlers dealt with the harsh realities of farming and how black slaves had a significant role in Southern Maryland’s past.
A project in its infancy is struggling to gain ground in Port Tobacco in Charles County, where archeologists are just beginning to unearth the remains of a colonial village.
Archeologists are struggling to recover, conserve, record and preserve these relics so that future generations will be able to learn how Southern Maryland evolved from prehistory to the present.
A rich history unfolds
From bits of clothing, remains of food, arrowheads, cannon and musket balls, eating utensils and shards of ceramic to the entire foundations of houses, Native American burial grounds and villages, plantations, print and mercantile shops, churches and schools just about anything used in the past is on the list of what archeologists have unearthed since serious excavating of Southern Maryland began in the early part of the 20th century.
Millions of pieces of the area’s history have been recovered, but an unknown number of artifacts still lie beneath the ground and river beds to excavate, clean up, catalog and preserve, according to local archeologists who are on the front line of the effort.
Much of the area’s history has been gleaned from these artifacts because many cultures that populated the region did not record histories of their stay in the area, said James Gibb, of Archaeological Consulting in Annapolis.
Gibb’s firm is leading the Port Tobacco project.
‘‘A lot of our past isn’t written down,” he said. ‘‘If we don’t conserve these archeological sites we’ll lose parts of our past. There will be no way to retrieve them.”
The lives of black slaves in Southern Maryland and American Indian cultures can only be understood if the artifacts that defined their lives are found and preserved, Gibb said.
‘‘We don’t find anything written down about the people who were enslaved on plantations, but when we think about it everything on a plantation was handled by slaves,” he said. ‘‘If we try to look for that in written records, good luck. There’s not much there.”
‘‘A lot of our history isn’t written down,” Edward Chaney, deputy director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum echoed Gibb. ‘‘Archeology is a way for us to learn about parts of our history that are not well recorded in documents.
‘‘Part of the value of archeology, why we pay tax dollars for this, is to make history more tangible,” he added. ‘‘We’re able to see history with our own eyes. People are intrigued by that.”
Often, settlers in the region were not able to read or write, so the recording of Southern Maryland’s history suffered as a consequence, said Henry Miller, director of research at Historic St. Mary’s City. Almost 40 years of excavation has taken place at the restored colonial capital of Maryland, known as the birthplace of religious freedom.
‘‘Events were minimally documented,” he said. ‘‘Archeology provides us with a crucial historical perspective on everyone, not just the wealthy and powerful. It’s impossible to learn how we became a people without that information.”
‘‘St. Mary’s City is one of the finest examples of 17th-century colonial restoration in the nation,” said Sue Wilkinson, director of marketing and communications there. ‘‘When the capital was moved to Annapolis, the city stood here ... Wooden buildings were rotting into the ground.”
It is crucial that the work at Port Tobacco continues so that a large portion of Southern Maryland’s history is recorded for future generations, Gibb said. The silting over of the Port Tobacco River in the mid-1800s is perhaps the best thing that happened to the town in terms of preservation of artifacts, he said.
‘‘Port Tobacco is probably the best-preserved historical town site in the entire state of Maryland,” he said. ‘‘It’s a very interesting story. Its demise because of the silting in of the river is evident ... there’s a pretty exceptional preservation of artifacts because of the sedimentation of the site. It’s a little bit like the Pompeii effect, but instead of a volcanic site, it’s sediment,” Gibb said, referring to the ancient Roman city that was preserved in volcanic ash after a catastrophic eruption of Mount Etna buried the city.
Quickly preservingthe past
Because of rapid population growth, forested land and open fields in Southern Maryland that still hide historical artifacts are disappearing.
‘‘Once they bulldoze a site it’s gone,” Gibb said. ‘‘There’s no replacing it. Development, particularly in Southern Maryland, isn’t going to stop. What we hope to do is achieve some sort of balance. We want to preserve some areas and develop around them.”
‘‘A lot of resources are being destroyed,” said John Fiveash, president of the Archaeological Society of Maryland.
‘‘As bulldozers go through to put in housing developments, the historical information goes away and there’s no way to recover it. If we don’t want to forget where we came from, excavation of these sites has got to be done before they are destroyed.”
Archeologists have to tread lightly when excavating a site, as well, because doing it too hastily can also destroy precious artifacts, Miller said.
‘‘We understand that by digging a site we’re destroying it,” he said. ‘‘We’ve got to be very careful when we dig artifacts up so we can record them.
‘‘There’s definitely a sense of urgency,” he added. ‘‘We want people to be aware that there is a rich heritage here and it’s threatened.”
Patricia Samford, an archeologist at the lab at Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum, said she tries to get that message across to school groups who visit the lab, which holds more than 7 million artifacts found at archaeological sites from across the state.
‘‘I tell schoolchildren that an archeological site is like reading a book that you can read only one time,” she said.
‘‘As you read the book the words disappear. Once a developer’s backhoe comes to a site and digs away the historical resources, they’re gone forever. That’s why it’s important for archeologists to come in and preserve that information for the future.”
Leap into history
Amateur archeologists contribute to the preservation of Southern Maryland’s history. More than two dozen volunteers joined archeologists during the past few months to help do the initial survey at Port Tobacco. The volunteers helped archeologists clean, analyze and record information for a report intended to convince the state, Charles County government and local residents to pitch in financially and physically to keep the project in motion.‘‘It’s really important to build up steam on this,” he said. ‘‘We need consistent commitment of local funding to really make this thing happen. This is a long-term project.”
So far, the excavation has uncovered 15 boxes filled with a variety of artifacts, Gibb said.
‘‘Given the fact that we’re just doing a shovel test, it’s extraordinary,” he said. ‘‘There wasn’t a single test unit that didn’t produce at least one artifact. Some units produced a couple of gallon-sized bags full. That’s a lot to come out of a little hole.”
‘‘A lot of archeological projects are carried on by amateurs,” Fiveash said. ‘‘It is possible to get involved.”
Participating in a dig is exciting, Samford said.
‘‘You never know what you’re going to find,” she said. ‘‘You never know what great discovery you’ll make in the next shovelful of dirt. For most volunteers, at first it’s just a really neat thing to do. But they find that if they stick with it for a while it goes beyond the actual physical objects. They begin to learn what the soil tells us about the past.”
‘‘Our history is what makes us who we are,” Fiveash said.
‘‘If we don’t know our history, we really don’t know who we are as a people. It’s that simple.”
E-mail Nancy Bromley McConaty at nmcconaty@somdnews.com.
